Recycled icons: warehouse conversions and restored Art Deco buildings are among new homes preserving London's industrial past

Now that financial services firms in steel-and-glass skyscrapers dominate the capital’s economy, it’s easy to forget that London used to be one of Britain’s most important manufacturing hubs.

At the height of Empire, between 1850 and the start of the Second World War, London was littered with gasworks, timberyards, food processing factories, breweries, warehouses, dockyards, canal basins, engineering and printing works — and power stations that provided the energy for industry and sent plumes of smoke to blanket the city.

In their ambition and scale, temples to industry such as the old Bankside Power Station, now Tate Modern, are as awesome as Gothic cathedrals; some would say as elegant as a Nash terrace.

Today, the growing concern is that industrial land that could be vital to the capital’s future economy is being turned over to flats and property speculation.

Leading builders such as Berkeley Homes have been snapping up more recent business estates with a view to their eventual redevelopment.

More than 250,000 people still work in manufacturing in London, down from 1.5 million in the Sixties. Yet the capital continues to lose industrial space seven times faster than anticipated in Mayor Sadiq Khan’s London Plan.

In west London, a wide swathe expected to be released from industry to housing over 20 years vanished in under four years.

Academics at University College London’s Bartlett School of Planning say the capital is reaching a crisis point, at risk of becoming a densely packed, high-value dormitory instead of a vibrant global city.

Large tracts of inner London, including Park Royal, Tottenham, Hackney, Woolwich and Bermondsey, where traditionally small and medium-size businesses flourished, are being eaten up by residential development.

When planners allow, developers often prefer to bulldoze old industrial architecture and build new homes from scratch, cynically using superficial or tokenistic industrial design elements referencing a site’s past.

Developers of reincarnated Battersea Power Station can hardly be accused of that.

Its Malaysian owners decided to restore the shell and iconic chimneys and create 253 loft-style flats, plus 100 shops, cafés and restaurants in and around the mighty brick structure, Europe’s largest Apple’s new campus will be here, too.

The 42-acre site will eventually have 4,364 homes, oceans of commercial, cultural and retail space and a new Northern line Tube station. Prices from £2.75 million. Call 020 7501 0678.

To borrow a current political slogan, such new housing should be for all Londoners and not just the few. In line with this, last week housing charity Peabody was chosen to build 386 affordable homes for shared ownership and rent at Battersea Power Station.

KEEPING THE BEST BITS

Despite the bulldozers, many of London’s iron and brick industrial memorials survive in varying states of revival or decay, often embellished with exquisite craftsmanship and finding imaginative and unlikely new incarnations — many as spectacular new homes.

Marble floors and columned façades were standard for factories in the Thirties. There are few better examples than The Hoover Building, an Art Deco masterpiece in Perivale, west London.

In its heyday, this listed red, white and blue landmark with its 15-bay façade and huge sweep of lawn looked like the home of a pharaoh, having architectural detailing influenced by the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb in 1922 as well as Aztec-inspired motifs.

Since 1990, the ground floor has been a Tesco supermarket, but the main section of the building, with a new roof addition, is being converted into 66 flats priced from £379,000.

English Heritage is supervising restoration of original features such as Crittall windows and the entrance foyer’s wrought-iron banisters and Travertine floors. Call IDM Properties on 020 7613 6561.

GORGEOUS GASHOLDERS

The post-industrial railway lands behind King’s Cross station seemed an unpromising location for prestige homes encased in a spider’s web of cast iron.

But The Gasholders London, new flats within the restored framework of three listed gasholders — known collectively as the “Siamese Triplet” because their decorative frames and riveted lattice girders are connected by a common “spine” — are an architectural tour de force, designed by WilkinsonEyre.

New cylindrical blocks contain 145 wedge-shaped flats with curved walls, full-height glazing and balconies that feel part of the elaborate framework. Internally, the flats reveal a “luxe industrial” character typified by concrete and brass, timber and poured resin floors.

Circular walkways overlook a vast open-air internal courtyard. One of the gasholders has a communal roof garden designed by Dan Pearson, while the roofs of the other two blocks form private terraces for duplex penthouses. Prices from £810,000. Call Savills on 020 7409 8756.

Former coal yards alongside the gasholders now offer smart retail space and restaurants, while a restored granary is the stunning new home of Central Saint Martins art school.

OPENING UP THE RIVERSIDE

National Grid has teamed up with developer St William to build 14,000 homes at derelict gasworks inside the M25 over the next 15 years. Projects in Fulham, Hornsey, Bethnal Green and Southall are under way.

Lots Road Power Station, built in 1904 to supply electricity to the Tube, is being transformed into a grand new address — Chelsea Waterfront.

Before closing 15 years ago, the eight-acre compound blocked access to the Thames but is now opening up with 706 homes, a riverside promenade, gardens and pedestrian bridges across tidal Chelsea Creek.

The power station itself, with its vast arched windows and tall twin chimneys, will yield 193 flats and a covered “high street” with restaurants, cafés and shops. In total there will be 10 new buildings.

Amenities for residents will include a spa and gym, underground parking and 24-hour concierge. Prices from £1.4 million. Call 020 3826 0673.

A BALANCING ACT

Silvertown, close to London City Airport in east London, was once a booming industrial district but became a wasteland after closure of the old docks in the Seventies.

Today, a £3.5 billion plan for 62 acres centres around restoration of Millennium Mills, a magnificent Art Deco structure once home to sugar refiners Tate & Lyle.

More than 500 tons of dangerous asbestos have been removed from the former flour mill, which will become a centre for 150 design and technology “brands” alongside 50 new buildings, parks, schools and community facilities. The first phase of 3,000 new homes will be available later this year.

Fish Island in Hackney Wick was once part of a thriving industrial suburb where in 1865 the Gas Light and Coke Company established a small factory town, now a conservation area.

By the Seventies, the 50-acre site was derelict, but kept alive by a colony of artists renting cheap studio space. Now the under-utilised land and buildings are a conservation area, part of a masterplan to create a new district with 5,000 homes, live-work dwellings, workshops and small business premises.

Carpenters Wharf, once a furniture factory, is one of several new canalside schemes.

Architects Studio Egret West designed an exposed frame and timber-clad warehouse-style building with a central atrium and a residents’ roof garden. Two-bedroom flats cost from £745,000. Call 020 7205 2199.

Developers Peabody and Hill are building Fish Island Village, with 580 canalside homes priced from £432,500. Call 020 3906 1950.

The Foundry, another new-build scheme, has 121 apartments priced from £399,950. Call Weston Homes on 020 8985 5597.

Close to the Olympic Park meadows, this fledgling neighbourhood is nevertheless a gritty urban landscape. And while it is smartening up, there are fears its unique character and arty community could be lost. We must protect both our heritage and our future.